


your eyes will need some time to adjust (to the overwhelming light surrounding us)

by chloebaeprice



Series: fault lines tremble underneath my glass house [3]
Category: Babylon (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Hospital AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-31 22:40:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6490141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chloebaeprice/pseuds/chloebaeprice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine."</p>
            </blockquote>





	your eyes will need some time to adjust (to the overwhelming light surrounding us)

**Author's Note:**

> the only sort of happy thing i've written for this ship so far
> 
> finn and liz are patients at a mental hospital and finn is a slut for the stars and sun (and liz)

 

_'cause you are loved_

_you are loved more than you know_

_i hereby pledge all of my days_

_to prove it so_

—sleeping at last, light

****

****

****

****

He will crash onto his knees any second now. He will crack apart from the impact. His body will splinter and be crushed inside-out. He is clenching and gritting against the flowers blooming in his mouth.

What would life be if not unfair? This is not poetry. It is a nightmare, one with men and women accused of being insane and pushed aside from civilized society. Can you imagine a nightmare such as that? Can you?

But anyone would act crazy if diagnosed as such, would they not? Or was that the crazy talking?

He wants his hair to be grasped tightly, red desert mountains tumbling out of his empty, skeletal head. The frame of his body is unlike that of his head, consisting of waves like that of rivers and crackling static.

It’s all in his head, remember?

He likes that word. Remember flows so lovely off his tongue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

People make mental illness seem like an ugly manifestation of the mind. He will romanticize it instead; make it out to be a stark, pretty thing. More like an ache in the bones and less like a numbing disease spreading. It is malleable, everyone. Not sticky, not heavy and certainly not something that will never die and continue to haunt.   

That’s ridiculous. He’ll get better, you’ll see. And then you can’t deny that what he speaks is the truth and what he speaks of does not make him insane.

Besides, he’s heard crazier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The outline of a body in a white coat moves to where he is, steadily making its way to inject him with something that makes him unconscious and he can’t let that happen. He’s not eager to feel the pain of a needle again.

So what does he do to escape?   

He doesn’t run, _no_. That’s the cliché solution and he’s never liked doing the normal, expected thing like an obedient, civilized citizen. No, if he’s going to be locked up, he’s going to have the behavior suited to that of someone locked up. It makes them all think he’s a dumb subject instead of one with an actual, you know, _brain_.

Surprise, surprise.

He throws up all over clean, white floor. Bile burns in his throat on the way down and a sickly taste coats his tongue.

Bet you weren’t expecting that, were you?

He hopes you’re starting to understand. He can’t have you not getting something this important right, but you probably won’t because, as unfortunate as this is for him to say, he barely understands it himself.

If you truly cared, you wouldn’t do that to him.

You wouldn’t.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When he was a kid, Finn learned that stars die eventually, like people, only they live much longer. But don’t worry, because there will always be new stars to replace them.

How can light come from death? Is it really that easy to replace brightness once it has been lost?

What if the world runs out of stars to replace the ones that died? Would the light they made in the gaping night sky be gone and never come back? Would there then be darkness where there was once light?

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s shaking as Liz holds his shoulders hard enough to bruise. He’s only holding her because he wants her to feel secure and tight. He wants her to feel like she can go to him for comfort and he can actually give it to her, that’s all. He also wants her to suck his skin until it discolors and remains, but that’s irrelevant.

His arms bring her tighter against him, the distance between their stars and skies and land closing in, lessening and meeting together as one. Him being able to experience the melding of their bodies, her skin malleable and passive, caving from the pressure of his limbs is a gift.

He’s pressing his lips onto her shoulder after pulling the sleeve of the hospital top aside and it grounds him but Liz trembles. He tries to steady her as her hips undulate over him, a lapping movement akin to that of waves. She sinks down, glides down along his shore, rushing water with desire. Slinks up, away from his hips, then back down again.

He stills her hips, hands grasping insistently and Liz stops moving, glaring into his eyes as though he has betrayed her. 

He is aching from the inside-out, the surface of his body scraped raw with need. He wants to lay her bare and give her what she needs, what _he_ needs but if they do this here, in a random patient room, they will get caught, that he is sure of.

And he won’t let them take her from him and hurt her like they hurt him, paralyze her with medicine and cut her open brutally enough that there will be scars left on her too. He won’t let her pure, unblemished skin be harmed and tainted like his. She is the only one who has ever succeeded in ripping the flowers from his mouth and not flinching or not shying away from the blood that gushed out after.

He bucks his hips up, grinding against her, allowing himself to be weak before he pulls her and him onto their sides, facing each other on the bed. Liz lifts her leg and rests it over his hip. He has to place his hand over her leg to stop her.

“I want to do this, but they’ll take you from me. You don’t want that, do you?”

Liz rapidly shakes her head no and he smiles, brushing her cheek to soothe her.

“You’re mine,” he chokes out, clenching his teeth to focus on steadying her, comforting her. She is his priority, his needs don’t matter—but his eyes are fluttering, trapping raindrops brimming on their edges and he gives up when she touches the back of his neck, soothing him instead and he rests his forehead against hers.

“Don’t cry for me, I’m not worth it,” Liz smiles, hoping to coax laughter from him at her expense and he recognizes this, squeezing her arm instead.

“Don’t say that,” Finn tries to be firm, but he is speaking too quietly for it to be so. “Crying for someone isn’t bad. It means you care about them. Enough to be honest about how you feel and your emotions aren’t secret. You rick rejection and do it anyway.” He has to look away from her sun-streaked gaze and gentle lips. He is turned to the wall, held above her, against her peaceful bones where there was once a tremor, her skin shaking when it is now still.

Liz grabs his face, pressure rough on his cheeks from the dry skin on her fingers. He hopes her fingerprints are imprinted on him now, a mark on his skin for the world to behold.

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,” Liz doesn’t sing it so much as speak it in a lilting tone, soft and sweet in her mouth. 

Finn wants to insist he is darkness, not even bright enough to be the moon and she is the sun, her, her, her—there it is in her hair and her eyes, her face a frame for them like land is to the sky and this is what desperation feels like, doesn’t it—but how can he when he’s never heard her sing before.

“You make me happy when skies are gray. You never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”

He hopes, if nothing else, they die together.

His smile is a crack across his face, broken and bruised, but Liz is still singing and that’s all he needs. He wouldn’t ask for anything more.


End file.
